


Who By Fire

by PerpetuaLilium



Category: Noir - Fandom
Genre: Age Difference, Catholic Character, Domestic, F/F, Fluff and Angst, Jewish mysticism, Lesbian Character, Literary References & Allusions, Post-Series, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, Psychological Trauma, Psychologists & Psychiatrists, Roman Catholicism, Series Spoilers, Theology, Therapy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-11
Updated: 2013-03-11
Packaged: 2017-12-04 23:15:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,101
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/716183
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PerpetuaLilium/pseuds/PerpetuaLilium
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some therapy regimes go more smoothly than others.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Who By Fire

**Author's Note:**

> 'Who By Fire' is a song by Leonard Cohen, from his 1974 album 'New Skin for the Old Ceremony'. The title and most of the lyrics derive from or are inspired by the second paragraph of Unetanneh Tokef, an eleventh-century Jewish liturgical poem recited on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. The poem deals with the Lord's control over the Books of Life and Death; the last sentence of the paragraph in question translates 'But Repentance, Prayer, and Charity avert the severe Decree!'
> 
> Mireille is more interested in the prayer than she is in the song, but the phrase of the title appears in both.
> 
> Mireille's expression of Catholicism--whether she stays Catholic or not--derives from her canonical literary cultivation or at least pretensions thereto and my own conception of how somebody like her, who has lived the way she has, would be spiritual and rationalise her life in accord with her spirituality and spirituality in accord with her life. I think the idea of a spiritually concerned Mireille can be extrapolated or at least defended from canon, but I'll take full responsibility for the interpretation presented here.
> 
> The fic takes place starting about a month to six weeks after the end of the series, which I place in September 2001, roughly contemporaneous with the end of the series's original run on TV Tokyo. The main storyline of 'Noir' is presented as having taken place over the course of a little over a year. The Kirika who appears in this story is very immediately post-traumatic and hard-pressed even to go along with the attempts at therapy; I imagine it is hard for Mireille, too.
> 
> 'O'Connor' refers to the American Catholic writer Flannery O'Connor (1925-64), who once said that a lot of people got killed in her stories, but nobody got hurt. The story to which Mireille is referring is 'Revelation', one of O'Connor's last. 'Teilhard' is the French Jesuit and paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955), much of whose work is both scientifically and theologically heterodox but profoundly challenging and interesting. 'Freezing Point' is the title in translation of the first and probably greatest novel of Miura Ayako (1922-99), one of the first popular Japanese writers to write on such explicitly Christian theological themes as original sin and salvation by grace. 'Guardini' is Romano Guardini (1885-1968), a theologian who was influential in the direction that Catholic thought took after World War II and in the development of Christian socialist movements in central Europe, and who wrote extensively on the 'territory beyond the horizon' of God's will.
> 
> I have personal experience with psychotherapy, PTSD, and certain types of religious conversion and guilt, but (obviously, I hope) not with the specific sorts of things that Mireille and Kirika have been through.

**KIRIKA 1**

 

‘M Dupont, your next appointment is here.’

I look up from my files, face its practised taut state against what I have to read there. The receptionist’s voice is low and somewhat annoyed, the way it gets when the appointment has been there for some time. Looking at the clock I see that already eleven minutes have passed since Mme Rochefort left.

‘Who is it?’

‘The immigrant girl, sir.’

‘Ah,’ I say. Four days ago, this girl came in to make an appointment. I didn’t get a good look at her then. She was East Asian, looked to be in her teenage years, dressed neatly but cheaply, and extremely shy. I sit back, fiddling with my watch until she comes in.

‘Hello.’

And here she is. Dressed almost exactly as I saw her before, with a different denim skirt and possibly a different-coloured camisole, but a very similar colour and the exact same style. It’s unusual on a girl of her age. I’ve seen it once or twice, but _only_ once or twice, on people who cope particularly strangely with the experience of leaving a highly regimented environment. A sort of ersatz uniform. Highly unusual.

‘Hello,’ I say. ‘I’m M Dupont. You must be Mlle Yuumura.’

 _‘Yooo-murrah,’_ she says. I said it ‘yoo-myoo-rah’.

‘Ah. Yooo-murrah. I’m sorry.’

She nods slightly, more of a half-accidental incline of her head than a clear and specific gesture, and sits down. A ladylike way of sitting. Reinforces the idea of coming from a regimented environment. There’s something about her eyes that I don’t particularly like.

‘Tell me about yourself, Mlle Yuumura.’

‘Tell you what?’ She is looking at the painting on my wall. It’s not a particularly spectacular or famous piece, though the client who gave it to me at the end of his treatment has done some other things that are of I think some note in the art word. A still life, that’s all, the contents of a man’s pockets unloaded on to a nightstand at the end of a long day. A bus pass, a wallet, a rosary, a pager—this in the days before mobile phones—and two cough-drop wrappers lying on an expanse of polished wood.

Either she’s a particular fan of art, or she is not fond of eye contact, or both. For now I would like to focus on those eyes. The stare in them, as if she sees something a million miles away, never bodes well.

‘Well…what do you like to do? Where do you come from? Who are you close to?’

‘I do enjoy painting,’ she says. All right. There we go. ‘This is a nice painting.’ She says nothing else. She looks away from the painting; still doesn’t look at me. She’s not used to eye contact either, then.

‘I am not from around here,’ she says.

I nod. ‘I looked at your records,’ I say. ‘You were in a high school in Japan for about five months in early 2000, weren’t you?’

‘Hmm.’ Another little incline.

‘You didn’t have any other records.’ She only has the bare minimum of records a person can have, other than that.

‘Hmm.’

So within five minutes I have a strong suspicion that she comes from a highly regimented and very unpleasant background, but one outside of which she does not feel comfortable. She dislikes eye contact, likes art but does not appear to have all that much to say about it, and seems never to have engaged in any of the various civic duties that I would expect except for this one almost-completed term of schooling two continents away at the beginning of last year.

‘Tell me about your family.’

‘I have none,’ she says. There’s more emotion in her voice now but I’m not entirely sure of what sort. It could be reverie. It could also be remorse, or even anger. I’m about to ask her to discuss what she means by this when for the first time since the pronunciation of her name Mlle Yuumura volunteers information.

‘I live in a flat on the Left Bank with Mireille.’

‘Who is Mireille?’

—And she looks down again. ‘Mireille, whom I cherish,’ she says softly. ‘Mireille takes care of me.’

‘A caretaker—not a relative?’

A little shake. ‘How long has Mireille been your caretaker?’

She pauses; counting.

Before she finishes—‘I’m sorry, but—was this before or after May of 2000?’

‘After.’

All right. So she appeared in the Japanese school system when she was sixteen or so—at least, that was the grade she was in. That would make her eighteen now, or nearly. After five months she dropped off the face of the earth and has now resurfaced in Paris, where she lives with somebody named ‘Mireille’ whom there’s no indication she knew before. The first part of this would tend to indicate that she originally lived in a situation that was extremely closely-knit and that may have had governmental or extragovernmental ties making it possible or desirable or both to keep Mlle Yuumura off the radar. She is Japanese; that would indicate either something high-level in the criminal world or to do with the United Nations, as simple military is unlikely. And she speaks absolutely perfect French.

‘You speak good French.’ Nod. ‘Do you speak Japanese as well?’ Nod. Well, that was probably a pointless question, but I will admit that the second step in this process, the step that ends with this girl in Paris, is completely baffling to me so far.

‘Also English,’ she says softly.

‘Interesting.’

‘Spanish…Russian, Polish, German, Italian, Dutch…Norwegian…Arabic and Hebrew, Chinese, Tibetan, Burmese, Vietnamese…Urdu and Hindi, Gujarati, Bengali, Punjabi…Portuguese, Galician, Basque…Igbo and Swahili, Afrikaans, Wolof…and Greek and Latin…Irish Gaelic…’

She trails off. This seems to be the end of the list.

So she’s a savant, also.

‘Tell me more about Mireille,’ I say.

She shrinks back a little, but shyly smiles. ‘Mireille saved me,’ she said, ‘and she taught me how to get about in the world.’

My mind trends more and more towards autism, abuse _possibly_ due to the autism, probably by a parent with very high international rank and reason to maintain extreme secrecy about family situation, a life as a runaway…and I don’t think I’m going to get much more right now. It’s been longer than it seems. A lot of silence, pauses, furtive glances with refused eye contact.

We sit mostly in silence a little longer. I gather eventually that Mireille’s last name is Bouquet; that Mlle Yuumura truly hasn’t got much conception of what her early life was like but that it does seem to have been absolutely awful; that she is not currently engaged in education, employment, or training but that she does have interests, most notably art, animals, and tea; and pretty much nothing else. I know nothing whatsoever about what is causing the various issues, profound and disturbing, that I see in her eyes, hear in her tone of voice, perceive in her movements.

‘Mlle Yuumura?’

‘Yes, M Dupont?’

‘I think I would like to meet with Mireille. Could you ask her to come and make an appointment with me at some point in the next few days?’

‘Yes, M Dupont.’

‘Shall we meet at the same time next week? By then I’ll have tried to meet with Mireille.’

Nod. And that’s the end of that session.

 

**MIREILLE 1**

 

She sits haughty in the chair, staring me down, her eyes firm and cold and distant in a far different, far more prideful way than Mlle Yuumura’s. She is taller, a little taller even than average, and her clothes also seem well worn. Much more stylish, though. For all the world seeming like an entirely opposite person.

‘Mlle Bouquet, tell me about yourself.’

‘M Jean Dupont,’ she says, ‘a most highly respected and acclaimed trauma psychologist, studied in ‘Sherlockian deduction’ as well as conventional psychological methods. I found you for Kirika because she desperately needed the best.’

‘Er…thank you, but…’ Her tone was somewhat sarcastic; not going to pay that too much attention.

‘You say ‘tell me about myself’,’ says Mlle Bouquet. ‘I signed the records release form when I made my appointment the same as Kirika did. I expect you’re somewhat alarmed.’

Alarmed would be a way to put it. It seems this woman is the younger child of one Laurent Bouquet, a crime boss who ran Corsica as his own little fief from young adulthood until his unsolved murder at his home in Ucciani in 1989 at the age of forty-one, along with his wife Odette and their son Claude. A vagrant period with her maternal uncle, also named Claude; at the age of fourteen, an arrest for concealed carry of a very illegal handgun, three months in juvenile detention. Claude (Feyder, the uncle) was found murdered at his Marseilles mansion early this year; it was never really found out why exactly he was able to have a mansion anyway, considering the collapse of the Bouquet syndicate over a decade ago.

‘You are aware,’ I say, ‘that Kirika has special needs.’

‘I am,’ Mlle Bouquet says. I think that what Mlle Bouquet means by special needs and what I mean by special needs might not dovetail very well; she knows Kirika better than I do, but I have increasing concerns.

‘How long have you been Kirika’s caretaker?’

She bristles. ‘I have been Kirika’s _partner_ since the summer of last year,’ she says, ‘except for a period of time when—’ She cuts herself off, composes herself, and says ‘M Dupont, are you familiar with the ‘Who by fire’, Unetanneh Tokef?’

‘Er, no. What is the ‘Who by fire’?’ Normally I would think that Mlle Bouquet is trying to confuse me, or get at me, or both. She is a former juvenile delinquent who seems to be the sole provider for an ersatz family of two, the other member of which is a likely autistic savant who is almost certainly coming from a background of severe abuse. And she refers to her as her partner, which makes me wonder if she might not be taking advantage. Yet she’s also the one who insisted that Mlle Yuumura come here. So I’m not sure what to think. I can’t imagine Mlle Yuumura’s environment being very stable; that’s a problem in any case.

‘The ‘Who by fire’, Unetanneh Tokef, is a Jewish prayer,’ says Mlle Bouquet. ‘When I was young, my parents taught me all about how to apply Catholic thought to my life. But when I grew older I discovered things did not work that way.’

‘You mean you discovered…what, sex, drugs, things like that?’ I ask.

‘What? No!’ Mlle Bouquet does not look scandalised; she looks almost amused. It’s the face of somebody who perfectly understands why one might think this but still finds it completely risible, but from the way her fingers are clenching on the arm of her chair there’s a definite anger in there somewhere, as if she’s disappointed in something that I am missing. I feel appraised. Not a comfortable feeling; I was not expecting somebody charismatic.

‘I’m sorry…’

‘Not your fault. I understand. I think I am the sort of person who could have led a very different life. It was in the beginning the application of Catholic thought that meant that I did not, but I was also doing a lot of things that I knew I shouldn’t have been. I learned to compartmentalise, and I did it sort of strangely.’

‘What did you do?’

Mlle Bouquet’s eyes are like steel. ‘Something clean,’ she says. ‘Something wrong.’

‘What does this have to do with the ‘Who by fire’?’ I ask.

‘I am glad,’ Mlle Bouquet says, ‘that I was clean, and wrong, and compartmentalized until I realized that that had failed me. If I had a life of enjoying the company of others I wouldn’t have gone through the fires of Purgatory as I did. But nothing distracted me from sin and redemption.’

‘Do you believe in God, Mlle Bouquet?’

Her eyes flash to my pocket watch.

‘I stand for the memory of my family and my family stood for faith in God,’ Mlle Bouquet says. Her eyes are trained on the watch. It’s a plain watch that my father got for thirty years of service in the middle ranks of the civil service.

‘So you felt cleansed by doing things wrong?’

‘I felt cleansed by doing _these_ things wrong. If I had fallen into the trap of sinning in the way that a woman of my age is usually thought to be sinful in, I don’t know what would have become of me. There’s a certain appeal to the Skoptsy heresy when you’ve had the life I have. Invisible cricket choirs singing hallelujah as freaks and lunatics leap up the ladder to Heaven. Was that O’Connor?’

Mlle Bouquet is able to make sense of trauma—and I’m beginning to think I understand what this trauma of hers and Mlle Yuumura’s is, even though she’s saying an incredible amount of the same thing over and over again—and even redeem it in this way; but her mind is a little scattered from it. Something happened to her fairly recently. She has a fresh-looking scar on her cheek and she walked with a slight and unpractised limp coming in here. And she does not think that she needs therapy.

She needs therapy.

‘Unetanneh Tokef asks us who it is who takes life,’ says Mlle Bouquet. She says nothing more about what this means. ‘I think I have moved past that question.’ She clenches her fists and hangs her head. ‘But…you still have to cope with what the answer is, don’t you? It’s either one thing or it’s not anything. It’s never you. It’s never in your power.’

Clearly obsessed with death; probably not a murderer. Perhaps blames herself for and lives in the shadows of the deaths of her family. Suffered a great personal tragedy, lived on the streets, extremely charismatic, cares for a younger, probably autistic, definitely traumatized woman. Again, there is something going on here. Yet she does care. I would put money, in francs or in euros, on there being nothing of abuse in their life now. She is simply unprepared.

‘What do you hope to derive from treatment, Mlle Bouquet?’ I ask.

‘For myself, or for Kirika?’

‘I don’t think you can speak for anybody but yourself.’

‘I think Kirika’s the one who really needs this. I have my own problems. I’m glad I became a different sort of person to what a happier or more normal ‘me’ might have been; I like the company I keep.’ Some of her speech patterns, particularly in word choice surrounding discussion of social concepts, are those of a much older woman, forty-five or fifty. I would not be surprised at all if, other than Mlle Yuumura, this stylish young woman knows nobody even close to her own age.

The things that I learned from this are that Mlle Bouquet is perhaps even less equipped, but better intentioned, than I had feared. I don’t know what in the world happened to her but she uses roundabout speech to avoid discussing the real issues. There has been a lot of death around her and she feels guilty for it. Mlle Bouquet says that only God can apportion life and death as if it’s some immense revelation to her, as if she was used to seeing man kill man more often than not. She sees Mlle Yuumura as a kindred spirit and they genuinely love each other. I can see that from both of them. But there are areas they won’t probe. If they want to be happy, I’ll have to get more from them than liking art and being quietly introspective in one case and being unexpectedly virginal and feverishly introspective in the other.

I’d like it very much if they could be happy. But as it stands, that is going to take more work than Mlle Bouquet’s pride seems it will allow her to put into it. I wonder how she maintained that pride those long years. She might be the greatest obstacle remaining to her own stability and happiness.

‘Meet me again next week, Mlle Bouquet?’

‘Certainly.’ She stands up stiffly. ‘Kirika really enjoyed coming here, you know. She may not seem it but she does like to meet people, shyly like this. Even if she can’t open up, thank you at least for that. We’ll see you the same times next week.’

Same time next week, Mlle Bouquet. If I can’t uncover anything else with Mlle Yuumura, it might be time to call the art therapist for her; but I think we might tread important ground with you.

 

**KIRIKA 2**

 

At last she’s dressed differently this time, in a short-sleeved slate-green shirt without the camisole and a much more obviously different skirt. She has a dust-coloured jacket that she has thrown on to the chair by the door upon coming in. She looks vaguely ill, but only in a perfectly normal way considering that it’s winter and she might easily have just caught cold coming here. I feel like giving her a blanket but that would feel strange somehow.

‘So, Kirika, I met with Mireille four days ago. She was very prompt. She made an appointment for the day after she came to make it.’

‘Hmm,’ says Mlle Yuumura.

I don’t want to effusively praise Mlle Bouquet’s intellect and care in front of Mlle Yuumura, at least partially because that would not be telling her anything she does not already know, but I don’t want to make only my concerns known. Mlle Yuumura has very recently washed herself up. Either she bathes relatively rarely in the normal course of things—doubtful, since at no point since I’ve known her has she stank or looked any worse than just slightly grubby—or she decided (or Mlle Bouquet decided) that these sessions were something worth looking good for.

For the second time, Mlle Yuumura actually volunteers a piece of information. ‘Mireille enjoyed her conversation with you,’ she said. ‘She thought she would, once I convinced her to do it. She even signed the records release form when she made the appointment, as a sign of trust.’

When Mlle Yuumura says a ‘sign of trust’ here I wonder if she doesn’t mean a show of strength. Though perhaps I am giving Mireille Bouquet too much credit as a player of games and not enough as a person.

‘Tell me about your home life, Kirika.’

‘What about it?’

‘Well…where do you live? What does Mireille do? You said you had a flat on the Left Bank; what’s a normal day like there for you?’

‘We are working on that,’ says Mlle Yuumura.

‘What does that mean for you?’

‘Mireille wants to enroll me in a school; I’m not sure it’s such a good idea. She spends most days doing odd jobs. Hairdressers, bars, other shops of that kind; wherever she knows somebody who needs help.’

‘Does Mireille have a stipend?’

‘Mm.’ A little shake of the head. It seems Mlle Yuumura just spoke more than she might have liked to for the session.

So, everything collapsed for Mlle Bouquet when her family and its syndicate did. No stipend or anything, just the uncle, the one who was found dead in Marseilles earlier this year. These women have had a hard life. I’m not sure if what they’re doing now is likely to make it easier.

‘Do you feel safe in your flat, Kirika?’

‘Mm.’ A little nod.

‘Where in the Left Bank do you live?’

‘Above a bar in the 5e Arrondissement. It used to be nicer.’ Her eyes go to that painting again, then the watch, which is on my desk, ticking away. Pocket watches seem to have a strange fascination for both of these women; I might say it was mine specifically, but it’s too plain for that. I don’t want to reach any conclusions about this. I’m not sure what this might indicate, except perhaps something to do with Mlle Yuumura’s family background.

‘What used to be nicer, the area or the flat?’

‘The flat. But it’s all right now. We aren’t in much danger anymore.’

Any more. So there was a time after Mlle Yuumura arrived in Paris, after Mlle Bouquet became her caretaker—partner—when things were dangerous for her. Actually, probably for both of them; Mlle Yuumura doesn’t use ‘we’ just because she can, and her French is too good to be confusing it, particularly as adverbs in her first language are, I understand, much more complex.

‘What, exactly, happened to you and Mireille, Kirika?’

‘Happened when?’

‘After you met; before now when you’re not in danger any more. Is that danger something you’re comfortable talking to me about?’

She shakes her head, totally silent; not even an ‘mm’.

‘All right. Is it okay if I ask Mireille about it?’

‘You can ask.’ The ‘but she won’t say anything either’ is implied. I’m beginning to think that I shouldn’t be asking her these questions this early on; she is putting up barriers, retreating more and more rather than opening up.

‘Let’s get back to what your daily life is currently,’ I say. ‘All right.’

‘All right.’

‘What do you and Mireille do together when you have free time?’

‘She likes to take me to restaurants and museums.’ I’m not going to ask where the money for _that_ comes from. ‘And we just sit and talk. She says I need to read more books.’

‘Do you have any favourite books, Kirika?’

She gives me a look like a startled cat. I’m not sure what, if anything, this indicates, but it’s clear that the discussion of books makes her both more interested and more uncomfortable. Perhaps there’s some particular book that she has uniquely good or bad associations with. A religious text? Maybe religion was part of her trauma, or maybe it’s part of her attempts at recovery so far. Mlle Bouquet spoke of religious concepts as well.

‘I like _Alice in Wonderland,’_ she says, but she says it oddly sadly, a sadness tinged with definite reverie. ‘And _The Little Prince.’_

‘What do you like about those books?’ I ask. They’re children’s books, but ones that adults love too. Is it possible that Mlle Yuumura’s trying to bridge, from a standpoint of near-adulthood, a certain idea of childhood that she has within her. Obviously it’s one that she didn’t get the first time around.

Mlle Yuumura says ‘Memories.’

I shift and raise my eyebrows to indicate interest in hearing more about this. Mlle Yuumura seems to pick up on it but choose not to elaborate anyway. I am getting the increasingly distinct sense that, while these memories are very important to Mlle Yuumura, they are not actually good ones.

 _‘The Little Prince_ was Mireille’s favourite book when she was little,’ Mlle Yuumura says. ‘She gave me the copy that her mother used to read to her a few weeks ago, after we got back from a trip to Spain.’

‘What had brought you to Spain?’ I ask. Mlle Yuumura flinches a little. I don’t get the sense that anything good happened while she and Mlle Bouquet were in Spain; she mentioned it right next to Mlle Bouquet’s childhood. Perhaps Spain is a place of her past somehow? But what would a Japanese family with some manner of high international clearance be doing in Spain? This isn’t making me feel like a psychologist; it’s making me feel like a detective.

Mlle Yuumura says ‘A friend of mine.’

‘A friend? Can you tell me about him or her?’

‘We had a falling out.’ Mlle Yuumura’s eyes are trending vaguely towards the ceiling. ‘She—’ She stops, something almost choking in her throat. Obviously this is important to understanding her past, whoever this person was. I’m still not sure whether to trust Mlle Bouquet; if Mlle Yuumura has trust issues they are not with being _overly_ trusting, but Mlle Bouquet concerns me nevertheless. Whatever happened in Spain, it was critically important at least to Mlle Yuumura, very possibly to Mlle Bouquet as well. If we are to make any progress I need to understand this. And I really think art therapy might be of great help to Mlle Yuumura.

‘Thank you, Kirika,’ I say. ‘When we meet next week there are some things that have been touched on to-day that I’d like to work on uncovering some more. I think I understand the way you live a little better now.’

‘Are we going to ‘work on that’, M Dupont?’ she asks, the tone of an innocent.

‘I hope so,’ I say. ‘Is that all right with you?’

‘Mm,’ she says, her head just barely moving up and down, riding on the collar of her t-shirt like a full moon.

 

**MIREILLE 2**

My second session with Mlle Bouquet starts with her, not me, asking a question. She is so forceful; it’s a little hard for me to get into her like this. ‘M Dupont, out of curiosity, why have you decided to meet with us separately for now, instead of together?’

I can’t really say the real answer here (that I want to form my own opinion of Mlle Bouquet and whether or not she’s good for Mlle Yuumura, and Mlle Yuumura seems to hero-worship her to an extent that might be prejudicial to that). So I say ‘Because you filled out the forms that way.’

‘I was surprised that you didn’t ask _me_ why _I_ was meeting with you separately,’ she says. Her eyes are cool, nothing like hate or anger in them, just constancy and quiescence.

‘So why are you? Is there any reason in particular?’

‘Because it’s how things worked out when I was scheduling,’ says Mlle Bouquet. ‘I’m not sure what exactly it is you’re doing to Kirika but she’s been more and more interested in my daily business without her, especially since the other day. Not my jobs. She knows about them.’

‘You do odd jobs in shops, right?’

‘Yes,’ she says. She’s well-dressed, more or less the same way as she was the first time we met but with different shoes and a different black mini-skirt. ‘It pays better than you might expect and our flat is not very large, so I think I should be able to maintain it until we can find somewhere better.’

‘What sort of place would you think of moving to that would be better?’ I ask.

‘Either some other flat in the Left Bank that doesn’t have quite the history that this one does or somewhere out in the countryside. Certainly not a suburb, not the Petite Couronne or anyplace like that; I could tolerate that but I doubt Kirika would like it at all.’

I nod. That makes sense enough. Kirika doesn’t seem to have problems with overstimulation, one of the only things that casts any doubt on my suspicion of autism. If anything she seems more comfortable when looking at the brightest or most unusual things in a place. A suburb or banlieue wouldn’t work for somebody like that.

‘You talked about a somewhat tense and conflicted religious sensibility last week,’ I say.

‘That’s right,’ she says. Her expression doesn’t change; her eyes don’t wander like Mlle Yuumura’s do at times like this. ‘I did.’

‘Does that have anything to do with your and Kirika’s history together?’ I ask.

‘It does, actually,’ she says, ‘and particularly our life right now. I’m taking stock, for various reasons. The way I was raised carried me this far but it also led me down some very dark alleyways. So I’ve been taking stock of the world.’

‘Have you come to any conclusions about it?’

‘Only love,’ says Mlle Bouquet. She turns slightly pink, almost but not quite what I would call a blush. It’s something that clashes in some ways with the image of her that I’d been having this last session and a half.

‘What about love?’

‘Oh, just that it’s very powerful in that it can save and justify somebody or just as easily condemn them to death. That isn’t something that I’ve found to be true of much else. In my case, I was afraid of it for a long time. And since sex was out of the question, on account of the anhedonia and the dread of the wars of the Lord, there wasn’t much there.’

‘Anhedonia?’

‘Yes.’

Mlle Bouquet does not seem like an anhedoniac. She is still and firm but she is distinctively alive, now and then amused, lips twitching and curling, eyes flickering to and fro.

‘Perhaps anhedonia is a strong word,’ she says measuredly. ‘Odd priorities having to do with how my life has gone.’

‘You mentioned that. You said you don’t begrudge that?’

‘No. In some ways in fact I’m grateful for it. But there still was not much there _at the time._ What’s there now is simply love.’

‘For Kirika?’

She nods. I sense that in these girls’ history the question of their love and the question of Mlle Bouquet’s ideas about faith and the world are by no means separate. Mlle Bouquet’s eyes go to the pocket watch again. Then to the painting. She and Mlle Yuumura both seem to have profoundly symbolic views of the world around them.

‘So you’re in a position of seeking and Kirika’s a constant in that,’ I say. ‘Is that part of her value to you?’

‘It’s part of it,’ she says. An interesting concession, and her tone makes it clear that it _is_ a concession for her. ‘But Kirika’s value to me is because she’s Kirika. It’s to do with who she is as a person. Her. It isn’t about what she can do for me. Don’t think it’s anything like that.’ Her fist clenches and unclenches, tight around the arm of her chair.

I nod. Of course. There’s nothing to indicate that Mlle Bouquet doesn’t really and truly love Mlle Yuumura. It’s ‘Kirika mentioned a visit to Spain that didn’t go very well but that she said was important to you,’ I say. Mlle Bouquet bristles a little, but not severely; she’s just a little surprised that I’m asking, it seems. ‘Is there anything we can say about that?’

‘Not much, I’m afraid, if Kirika doesn’t want to talk about it.’ Interesting faith…!

‘Tell me about your life with Kirika. What does she like to do during the day?’

‘She enjoys people-watching at the window.’

‘Am I correct in thinking that Kirika was not particularly socialised growing up?’ I ask without expecting an answer. I am just bouncing things off of the wall that is Mireille Bouquet to see if anything will stick.

She surprises me a little, looking aside and saying ‘That’s true.’

‘Tell me about that.’

‘I’m not sure what there is to tell. She was enigmatic to me for a long time. But I understand her better now.’

‘What kind of a place is Kirika coming from, Mireille?’ I ask. I really don’t trust Mlle Bouquet, in the sense that she doesn’t fully trust me. She doesn’t think, for one thing, that she herself needs help. So I can’t trust her to be sharing everything. That just isn’t how it works; I can’t expect that.

‘Kirika’s life…’ begins Mlle Bouquet. She stops. It doesn’t seem as if she’s about to start again.

‘Mireille,’ I say, ‘it seems like a lot of what’s made Kirika so concerned and uncomfortable around others has also made you, for lack of a better word, withdrawn. Would you say that’s a fair assessment?’

‘I would,’ she says. ‘It’s not that I don’t want to work with you.’ She doesn’t explain what it _is,_ but I think I can guess.

‘I see. Mireille, can you tell me anything about your relationship with your family before their deaths? From what you’ve said, it sounds to have been quite strong.’

‘It was, particularly with my mother and my Uncle Claude, on her side.’ She stops again; definitely, she is going to talk about this on her own time.

‘I think I would like to meet with both you and Kirika,’ I say, ‘after one more of my scheduled meetings with Kirika to see if she’s all right with the idea. Would you be comfortable with that?’ She nods and murmurs assent. ‘Great. You have my card, right?’

‘Yes,’ Mlle Bouquet says. She turns to be and smiles genuinely. ‘This might sound a bit odd to you, but I look forward to that.’

 

**KIRIKA 3**

And even now she does seem to be opening up if only slightly; opening up in the sense that if I referred her to somebody else she might trust that I was doing it out of genuine care for her. This is certainly an improvement. She’s sitting with a sketchpad. I told Mlle Bouquet that if she wanted a little business to do with her hands while she was here, artistically, that would be more than all right.

‘Kirika, there’s one thing that I’d like to ask you.’

‘Is this what Mireille talked about the other night?’ Mlle Yuumura asks. ‘She talked about the idea of both of us coming in at once, because it’s a little uncomfortable running around in circles like this.’

‘Yes,’ I say. I can tell from Mlle Yuumura’s fairly generic, somewhat uplifted expression that though her feelings aren’t too terribly strong she thinks she likes this idea, but I want to confirm, because that’s what you do. ‘Active listening’ or whatever it’s called. I call it being kind, or trying to anyway. I lean forward. ‘Do you think that that would be a good idea, Kirika?’ She nods, with that little murmur of generic assent of hers, gazing at the buildings across the street through the window beside my head. ‘Would you be all right with coming in at Mireille’s normal time in two days?’ I ask. ‘What do you normally do when Mireille is out?’

‘Sometimes I prepare for when Mireille is going to come back,’ she replies. ‘More often there’s not much preparation that really needs to be done. We’ve become good at sharing housework. So I’ll just sit and think for a while.’ She’s shrinking away. I’m beginning to expect things like this, and it isn’t getting anybody anywhere, which is why I want to have this meeting with the two of them together.

‘Do you ever leave the flat on your own when she’s also out?’ I ask. Even if I sort-of trust them now things like this have a serious impact on one’s health, and I’m doubtful here.

‘Sometimes,’ she replies. ‘Not often but that is because what I would actually have to do outside can be…limited. There is this art gallery that I enjoy going to sometimes, though.’

‘What sort of art?’ This could be a good way to open an avenue I want to discuss more when I meet with both of them in a couple of days.

‘Mainly the sorts that would be called…I think ‘impressionist’ and ‘expressionist’? I know they’re not the same but I love them both.’

‘Kirika, this is something that I understand you might feel most comfortable talking about with Mireille as well, but have you ever heard of something called art therapy? I want to meet with both of you before we decide anything, but I think it could help you a lot.’

‘Art therapy?’ she says. ‘Would that be where…you go to an art studio, and you paint, and through the painting a therapist helps you identify and solve problems?’

‘Essentially, yes. The painting can itself be cathartic, and in your case I think that that could be very good.’

‘Oh,’ she says with a rueful smile, the first genuine smile of any sort I’ve seen on her even though she’s admirably less morose than most people with what her situation seems to be like, ‘if catharsis means what I remember, I know that very well.’

‘Something happened that was cathartic?’

And here comes the return of ‘Mm’ and staring out the window as a response.

‘Does this have anything to do with Spain?’

‘It happened there.’ She clams up yet again. This isn’t, I am beginning to think, anything she wants to discuss without Mireille present. Well, more for two days from now, in any case. Mlle Yuumura’s got a sharp mind on her. She certainly wants to deal with these issues and come to lead a better life. Everybody does; I believe that, truly, truly. But she has a specific series of steps by which she wants to do this. Mlle Bouquet is involved. So is art.

‘I think we’re making progress, Kirika,’ I say. My smile might look a little more chipper than I’m actually feeling about it, but the sentiment is real.

‘We are?’ she asks in vague surprise. I begin to suspect that a lot of Kirika’s thoughts operate on a level below, or perhaps above, her own understanding.

‘We are,’ I say, ‘though I think we’ll be making a lot more once we get you in here as a couple.’ This actually makes her blush a little; I admit I was not expecting that.

‘When Mireille and I are both in here,’ Kirika says, ‘I’d like to talk about things that I might do for work, with the art.’

‘Instead of the therapy or in addition to it?’

‘In addition. I was thinking I might like to work in a gallery.’ Her voice is so shy. ‘There’s a gallery about four blocks from our flat that looks out over a little cove in the Seine.’ Her voice stops but her smile goes on and brightens.

‘Kirika,’ I say, ‘at this point…if there’s anything that you’d like to talk about that you don’t feel we’re adequately addressing, please let me know.’

Mlle Yuumura thinks for a few moments with her chin in her hand, gazing off to the left. ‘Nothing in particular,’ she says. ‘I think that the art is a good idea. I think I should really like that.’ Her eyes drift out the window to where a construction crew is working on the building across the street. Things commonly draw her attention through noisiness or light. I think it is safe to write off a diagnosis of autism by now. This, the watch, the cars outside, the painting…Mlle Bouquet…

‘Has this been helping your relationship with Mireille so far?’ I ask. ‘These sessions so far. You’ve mentioned that you at least occasionally discuss them between yourselves?’

‘Mm,’ she says with another of her vague inclines. ‘It has.’

‘Well, I’m glad of that at least,’ I say. ‘My—ah, remaining concern, what I wanted to address with you and Mireille together, has to do with Mireille’s ability to take care of two people on her own.’

‘Mm.’

‘I mean in the long term. It’s obvious things are working now, but, Kirika, you’re going to be…eighteen soon?’

‘Yes, I think, if I’m not already.’ She draws her legs up to her chest and sits there like a little nesting doll.

‘So you’ll be a legal adult.’

‘I suppose so.’

‘Well…do you plan to continue living with Mireille then? It’s obvious that you care about each other. Honestly, since you don’t have very much formal education at all…’

She shakes her head, eyes mostly closed. ‘I know. I hadn’t been thinking of leaving. For that or anything else.’

‘You feel safe?’

‘Mm.’

‘You feel comfortable?’

‘Mm.’ She smiles. Every smile, every new iteration of a happy expression, gives me joy. ‘I feel comfortable now.’ Her voice comes down on the ‘now’ like a hammer on a drum. There is so much more to do here. When Mireille comes in with her we can address that more. For now, I’m simply happy that she’s comfortable.

‘You know,’ Mlle Yuumura says, glancing down at where her shoes are drawn up to the edge of the chair, ‘before I started coming here, I thought everything was over.’ She throws her weight; spins a little, halfway around so she’s facing away from me. Throws her weight again, she comes almost to look in my eyes one more time. Eye contact. The one thing she hasn’t made any kind of progress on at all. ‘But things are in motion,’ she says.

‘Yes. You’re going very quickly. Well, I mean…’ I cough and scratch my chin. ‘In terms of rapport and such things…’

‘That isn’t really what I mean.’ She throws her head back; up; stares at a spot on the ceiling. ‘I mean my life in general. Things move even when it seems as if they’ve reached a resting point.’ Her hands work in her lap, thumb over thumb, palm over wrist. ‘It’s never going to let me rest, is it?’

‘If it does or if it doesn’t,’ I say—I don’t know what ‘it’ is and probably never will, so it’s time for me to accept that and prepare for two days from now—‘you can still lead a life worth leading.’

‘I like the life I lead now with Mireille.’

‘I am not saying there is anything wrong with your life now,’ I say. ‘Just that no matter what happened in the past, now I believe that she and you can be happy.’

‘Ah,’ says Mlle Yuumura.

 

**KIRIKA AND MIREILLE**

 

The given day comes and they come in dressed oddly formally. Mlle Bouquet seems tenser than usual, Mlle Yuumura less so. If I had to guess I would say that this bears some significance to their relationship beyond its concrete nature as event, but that is not something that I can quite yet bring to the level of a conclusion. Nor do I need to. This is going to clear the air, I think.

Mlle Bouquet has brought a few books with her. There are four, three of which have titles on the spine: _Choosing Judaism,_ in English, with the ‘Choosing’ larger presumably to underscore that Judaism is a highly unusual choice for anybody to make from outside; _Le milieu divin,_ one of the lesser works of Teilhard; and something called _Freezing Point._ The fourth looks as though it might be a Bible, or, alternately, a Mishnah. This is where her mind has been for weeks now. She is dreadfully serious about this.

‘I’m glad I was able to catch both of you,’ I say. ‘I think we can get through a lot to-day if we work our best together.’

‘Spare us these pleasantries,’ says Mlle Bouquet, glaring straight at me. ‘We’ve known you for weeks.’

‘All right.’ I clap my hands, an arresting, sometimes alarming, sometimes engaging gesture. Their heads leap just a little. ‘We were talking about getting Kirika into an art therapy programme and, Mireille, you and I doing some further work together. There’s a number of things that should be talked about further before we make any absolutely final decisions.’

Mlle Bouquet shifts her eyebrows just a little and says ‘All right. We’re listening.’

‘You’re being fairly antagonistic.’

‘I apologise,’ she says. ‘I’m not trying to be. I just had a bad day.’

‘Tell me about it.’

Mlle Bouquet looks at Mlle Yuumura; Mlle Yuumura quietly nods. ‘I ran across somebody who reminded me of some things I didn’t want to be reminded of,’ Mlle Bouquet says. Her hands are twitching in her lap. Memory acting on some other sort of memory, perhaps. ‘It’s all right, though, now.’

‘We went up to our flat and had lunch,’ says Mlle Yuumura, ‘and Mireille felt better after that.’

‘Good,’ I say. ‘Well…before we start the discussion of where we go from here, I’d like to ask both of you some questions. Some of these I may have asked you before separately. Is that all right?’

‘Sure,’ says Mlle Bouquet.

‘All right,’ says Mlle Yuumura.

‘Wonderful,’ I say. ‘Then let’s begin. First: Mlle Bouquet, Mlle Yuumura. I apologise; I know it may seem like we’ve been over this before, but I’d like to see if you could give me, together, a full account of where you currently stand together. Not what’s happened in the past; simply now, and what comes after.’

Mlle Bouquet bristles and reaches up and, in what looks like an instinctive gesture, primps her hair just a little. ‘Things are…better than when we started this, actually,’ she says, ‘though not entirely because we started it. The more time passes the more things heal. Even though I know that that’s not all.’

‘Mireille and I have been reading a lot,’ Mlle Yuumura says, looking at the stack of books in Mlle Bouquet’s lap.

‘Mireille,’ I say, ‘are you considering some manner of religious conversion?’

‘I would not couch it in those terms,’ she replies. ‘I’m not actually coming from a state of Catholicism in any real sense. I’m coming from a state of absolute Fallenness that Catholicism has informed. Kirika is—’ She stops and her eyes go to Mlle Yuumura.

‘I just want a life that plots out and happens from day to day,’ says Mlle Yuumura. ‘I—well, if we are here to discuss where to go next…I looked up art therapy to see if that was really what I would like.’

Mlle Yuumura is smiling in a sort of expectant way, as if she’s proud of herself for having taken the initiative to do this. Very possibly, rightfully so. It is not easy, coming from a place of thrusting down problems—speaking of which, I’m still trying to work out if at any point Mlle Bouquet has tacitly admitted to that.

‘I think it would be very good for me,’ says Mlle Yuumura. ‘And then maybe I can find something to grab on to. I want to grab on to it with Mireille.

I point to the books. ‘So that searching is for both of you?’ I ask. I’m not entirely certain why Mlle Bouquet brought the books this of all times. If she thinks she is the end of it she is kidding herself. The only thing that I could think of her wanting to demonstrate with this is precisely what I asked her and Mlle Yuumura about, the idea that for two people this close any genuine and important search, religious or any other kind, has to be together.

‘We learned that very thoroughly,’ Mlle Bouquet says. ‘Any searching has to be for both of us, now.’ Mlle Yuumura silently reaches over to Mlle Bouquet’s lap, picks up _Le milieu divin,_ and begins paging through it until she comes to a dog-eared page. I’m not sure if this is meant to be a demonstration of Mlle Bouquet’s point or if it is simply its part of the way Mlle Yuumura is.

‘So we are making this happen, then?’ I ask.

‘Making what happen?’ says Mlle Yuumura.

‘More sessions with me and Mireille,’ I say. Mlle Bouquet casts me a glance like a sword. ‘Mireille, you have to understand that there is absolutely nothing _wrong_ here but we are not going to work to make you the woman you want to be unless we do it together.’

‘I want to do it together with Kirika,’ says Mlle Bouquet.

‘They aren’t mutually exclusive.’

Mlle Yuumura puts her hand on Mlle Bouquet’s arm. Mlle Bouquet looks at her gently, lovingly. ‘Mm,’ Mlle Yuumura says.

Mlle Bouquet shifts again in her seat. ‘All right,’ she says. ‘I’m in.’

‘You understand,’ I say, ‘that you will not be doing this therapy _with_ Kirika?’

‘I _live_ with Kirika,’ she says. Mlle Yuumura is smiling peaceably. ‘If I am going to be doing this it isn’t that that’s uniquely inconvenient for me. We talked about this a little bit last night. She said she was looking forward to her art therapy.’

‘I am,’ says Mlle Yuumura. How she can be looking forward to a form of dredging up whatever trauma is here I am not sure but nevertheless I am glad of it.

‘And we can go further out, maybe, as things go forward,’ says Mlle Bouquet. ‘The thought of Guardini.’

‘Wonderful,’ I say. ‘Then, whenever you like, I can refer you to Mme Esterhazy for that. And this process will take a long time for everybody concerned, I’m sorry to say.’

‘Right,’ Mlle Yuumura says at last. ‘But it can at least begin.’


End file.
